The Mahabodhi Temple at Dawn

It is Saturday morning, and some members of our sangha got up before dawn and went back to the Mahabodhi Temple to do mindful walking at about six or six thirty. The bus moved at a leisurely pace, and we saw countless people, mostly Tibetan monks and nuns, walking steadily in groups, headed for the big temple in the semi-darkness of dawn. Shantum had anticipated that we would be so early that it wouldn’t be crowded, but that was looking pretty erroneous. At least we’d be in good company. We got off the bus not far from the temple and walked toward the shoe stop, where Shantum said we could tuck our shoes in our bags instead of leaving them behind, if we wanted, and I did that. Others took newspapers from Jagdish and wrapped their shoes before putting them in their bags. It must be nice to have your head screwed on properly.

A gate and offerings in front of the bodhi tree

Bodh Gaya is quite the place for people watching. In front of the shoe stop, I stood around and observed the plethora of red-robed figures drifting by, and I saw a Tibetan monk with a striking resemblance to the Dalai Lama. He looked between fifty and sixty years old, wore glasses, and had eyebrows pointed in the center just like the Dalai Lama’s. I first saw him walking up the path and also watched him enter the bookstore next to the shoe stop. I mentioned this to John later, and he said that he’s seen the same monk, and that he must get a kick out of looking like the Dalai Lama. During Strucks in the evening, I said, “I saw a Tibetan monk who looked a lot like the Dalai Lama.”

“Maybe he’s his son,” Natalie said. She hastily added, with a little shake of her head, “Oh!”

The air was cold enough when we started walking around the temple that I could see my breath. The sky had begun lightening to a dark blue. We passed through the gate and turned sharply to the left. I saw the lawn around the Mahabodhi temple lit up with strings of yellow-white lights, creating countless glowing lines in the dark; they were like Christmas tree lights. We circled along a walkway just within the gate, crowded in mostly with red-clad monks who murmured prayers, a soothing sound like many cats purring. The path, no bigger than a typical sidewalk, was wall-to-wall people, and occasionally robes brushed against me, but the murmurs were so pleasant that someone could have stepped on my toe and I wouldn’t have minded. Not much, anyway.

I had worn my sandals instead of my sneakers, and so I walked barefoot on the cold pavement. Dean asked, “Aren’t your feet cold?”
I said slowly, with braced teeth, “Yes.”
Dean nodded at that and repeated, “Yesssss.”
“I’m gaining merit this way,” I said. “Besides, my feet aren’t as cold blooded as the rest of me. It’s like I’ve got someone else’s feet.”

We visited significant places of the Buddha, where he hung out around the Mahabodhi Temple during his first week after gaining enlightenment, and at each location Shantum explained how it was significant. Circumambulating, we moved gradually closer and closer to the Bodhi Tree: this circling around, from a big square to smaller and smaller internal squares, is how I finally realized that the temple is set up as a mandala, like in Tibetan artwork that symbolizes various realms. Some mandalas are artists’ renditions of Mount Kailash, and others represent the mythic kingdom of Shambhala, for instance. Here at the Mahabodhi Temple, Tibetan monks seemed to paint the three dimensional mandala with red: many circumambulated like us, and amid the stone stupas and walkways, Tibetan monks sat or prostrated on long cushions.

As we reached one corner, Shantum led us straight ahead, instead of going around the corner. We came to a nook where we temporarily left the square of the mandala and walked across a patio with the Muchalinda Ashoka Pillar looming in the center. Tibetans and Bhutanese circled it, rubbing their backs against it as they circumambulated slowly. This was quite unlike the pillar at Deer Park, which was behind a forbidding fence. I looked up, but the pillar no longer had its capital, whether or not snarly lions used to top it.

We stepped through a stone archway, walked straight ahead in an open structure with columns, and approached a big tank, the Muchalinda Pond, where legend has it a snake came and protected the Buddha in a storm. Now in the center of the tank stands a big colorful Buddha statue protected by a cobra arching its head above the seated Buddha’s head. Countless Tibetan prayer flags are strung across the pond, beyond the statue, and the flags give the grey early morning sky a festive look with all their bright Buddha colors.

At the Ratnaghar Chaitya, the Buddha meditated, and his body supposedly emanated different colors, which to this day appear in the colors of the Buddhist flag: blue, green, yellow, red, and white. Those are the colors most often seen in Tibetan prayer flags, although the string of flags Erika purchased on the way up to the austerities cave included turquoise. I’ve read that the colors represent the five ancient elements, earth, air, fire, water and spirit; for instance, yellow represents the earth and blue represents air.

We walked along the Jewel Walk, where the Buddha thought up dependent causation. He was treading back and forth by the Bodhi Tree and stopped to stare at the tree without blinking. Meanwhile a bird pooped in his eye. Just kidding. Legend has it that lotuses sprang up where he stepped, just as they supposedly did shortly after he was born and walked for the first time. I conjured a vivid mental image of the Buddha, in his yellow robe, pacing back and forth on a grassy surface amid trees, and with lotus flowers magically springing up behind him.

As we neared the mandala’s center, we passed a section of lawn, stupas, and pale walkways with orange- and yellow-clad Indian monks seconds before visiting the sign marking where the Rajavata tree had stood. It was the place where the Buddha met and impressed two merchants. They offered him grain in exchange for his giving them teachings, and he gave them a talk on his doctrines under the tree. Thus the two merchants were unofficial disciples of the Buddha; they tend to not be counted simply because they were laypeople rather than monks. Now a stone with a sign on it stands marking the spot, and when we reached the location Tibetan monks surrounded the sign.

Gail turned to Shantum and asked, “Those monks we just saw, in the yellow and orange robes. Are they from Sri Lanka?”

He explained that no, they were Indian, and said, “Street people put on robes and beg.” Perhaps the movement to convert Untouchables to Buddhism is more political than spiritual.

We visited the location of the Ajapala Nigrodha Tree, a banyan tree. The god Brahma came and spoke to the Buddha here, or according to Shantum, the Buddha was really speaking to himself, having an internal dialogue. He had an internal conflict about whether or not he should teach, and eventually he decided to teach rather than merely kick back and bask in his enlightenment.

“It is,” Rikki later said, “difficult to describe rice pudding, just as it is difficult to describe becoming enlightened.” The Buddha was reluctant to do it, to teach others, but ultimately he took the risk. The tree is gone now; standing in its location is a pillar and a marble sign on another pillar beside it. The sign basically says, “I have not a teacher. I am the Enlightened One.” Yeah, sure, that’s my excuse for not having a teacher.

I get the impression that Siddhartha was inherently introverted like me. It would have been tempting indeed to not wander around teaching others, but to keep quiet, instead of taking the more responsible and nurturing path of teaching so that other people can acquire enlightenment and change the world. I have on a few rare occasions attempted to vocally teach closed-minded people a thing or two, and they have refused to take me seriously. But as a writer I can teach without people meeting me and thus without their passing judgments on me.

When we reached the inner circle of the mandala, we once again came to the Bodhi Tree, which is another of the seven special places of the Buddha. He sat under the tree on a full moon night and meditated all night long, and he attained Enlightenment at dawn. He next spent one week taking it easy and enjoying himself under the tree. We walked past, circling the tree and temple for the final time.

The sangha moved up the path back to the long staircase to leave the temple, but first we made one last stop at a special place of the Buddha. It was a Hindu temple, to the right of the path. In front of one of the little temples stands a pedestal with a stone plate edged with lotus petals, just like a lotus throne under a Buddha statue, and the plate is engraved with Buddha footprints on its flat surface. It probably dates to the era before artists began to disregard the Buddha’s wish to not be portrayed, when rather than Buddha statues, artists sculpted lotuses and empty lotus thrones that represented the Buddha. The footprints were strewn with orange marigold petals and pink lotuses.

It’s amazing when I realize how much we can do before we even have breakfast; the climb to the Saptaparni cave was before breakfast, as was today’s circumambulation of the Mahabodhi Temple. The early bird does get the worm, and Ben Franklin must have been onto something, about being healthy, wealthy, and wise. Not that I intend to get up at five every morning in future.

The Nameless Streets of Bodh Gaya

Today is India’s Independence Day, a national holiday. This morning, we walked from the Daijokyo Buddhist House and to a small two-story whitewashed school building across the walkway out front, where we attended a flag-raising ceremony on the front lawn. Teenage schoolgirls in bright salwar-kamiz stood in a row before the flagpole. They attended the school in front of us, which teaches abilities such as sewing and typing, and the headmistress said that girls who want a good marriage must go there. I thought that since I didn’t study there, it’s a good thing I’m not interested in getting married. A bunch of guys also stood on the other side of the flagpole, but they were adults, not teens; at least some of them were probably janitorial staff or servants.

Shantum stepped forward and raised the flag, and as he tugged on the ropes, pink, red, and white rose petals drifted out of the orange, white, and green striped flag. They presumably were supposed to flutter and drift gracefully, but at first the rope didn’t want to let the flag open up, and after a few more tugs a cluster of petals dropped onto the ground in mostly the same spot. It was so much less militaristic than what I’d expect to see in the States: flowers rather than drums and guns. Flower power. Several people, including Mukesh and Jagdish, delivered speeches, mostly in Hindi, and a girl in a bright yellow salwar-kamiz sang. I preferred the singing, because I don’t have to know the language to appreciate the music.

We walked to the Pragyavihar School, the name of which Shantum translated as the School of Wise Abiding. We were going there to attend the big celebration. Soon we reached the school, a large three-story white mud or plastered brick building, on the paved grounds of which stood rows of children in burgundy uniforms like British kids.

We entered the school grounds and sat in rows of folding chairs to the right of where the kids stood in neat lines. A very tall and slender grey-haired Englishman showed up wearing a black suit with a black turtleneck. But he didn’t wear a beret, so I guess he wasn’t a Beatnik. Coming to think of it, Allen Ginsberg was into Buddhism and took a pilgrimage to some of the same places as we. Our trip could have been called “In the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg.” The kids marched and saluted to the English dude, and he talked with Shantum and sat in the front row, ahead of us. I soon found out that he’s Christopher Titmus, who founded this school and thus got poor kids off the streets. If it weren’t for this charitable school, the children we saw in clean burgundy uniforms would probably just be more beggars on the street, like those we’ve seen by the masses.

Another important guest arrived, a round-faced and stout Buddhist monk draped in orange and yellow cotton and wearing a yellow stocking cap. Shantum identified him as the pope. Yesterday Shantum had said that he was stopping to see the pope, meaning the local Buddhist authority figure. This pope came across as much more pleasant, not to mention more humorous and easy-going, than the Catholic pope. He even had a faint Buddha smile.

The kids marched and saluted the flag, disconcertingly reminding me of the military, and some kids danced in groups or gave speeches by themselves in English or Hindi, and some adults also gave speeches, such as the principal or headmistress. The speeches were projected over a megaphone, a technology that I’ve concluded really doesn’t have good sound quality, but it seems to be in common use in India.

For one of the dances, a group of very small children wore flowery straw bonnets and white dresses and straw hats and danced like they knew what they were doing, though one girl had an issue with a pajama leg that didn’t want to stay up—she had pulled her pants up and worn them underneath her costume. My favorite part of the festivities was the girls dancing with rattling bangles: future Bollywood stars.

Toward the end of the celebration, I was astonished when kids brought out for us chai with a couple of snacks on paper plates. One of the snacks was a squiggly translucent orange candy that Val said she had made in New Delhi and that’s made entirely of sugar, although if she hadn’t said that I would have assumed it was made entirely of honey, as I had thought when I ate the same snack at an Indian buffet restaurant several years ago. The other snack was samosas: yummy, big triangular fried pastries, filled with veggies and spices. I found it surprising that they would bring us treats in addition to entertaining us; they really splurged with generosity, and we aren’t exactly starving beggars.

Erika has caught the virus that has been gradually spreading in our traveling sangha, and she was crouched next to me with her camera, when she had a horrible coughing fit, and I handed her a cough drop. I have noticed myself doing things like this on the pilgrimage, sharing and interacting with others in ways that I sometimes did in St. Louis but not in Topeka, where despite my general understanding and sense of being connected to the human family and the entire planet, I find myself overwhelmingly disconnected and alienated. There’s quite a difference between feeling connected with the world and feeling alienated by the people in your immediate environment. Yet here I am, without having to think about it, behaving in a nurturing manner to people who are around me, and who also treat me in a supportive and nurturing manner. No doubt I am acting this way because for a change I genuinely feel connected to the people around me.

Often I help others from a distance by donating to humanitarian, anti-war, and environmental organizations and taking at least online action with help from such NGOs. I also sign petitions and e-mail letters, and write my own letters, thanks to organizations and the Internet, a great tool for introverted activists. I’ve done this, justifying how reclusive I’ve been in the past few years and believing that I’m nurturing large numbers of people.

Furthermore, in Topeka, Kansas, I’ve had too much contact with vicious relatives and other hostile people. Getting thank-you letters from an organization like the Global Fund for Women does give me a happy feeling, because I’ve helped in some way, though it has on occasion brought up the selfish thought: “At least someone appreciates me,” accompanied by awareness that people who appreciate me have never met me, while the people in my usual environment have utter contempt or at best indifference toward me. The second time I thought like this, I immediately became conscious that I was wallowing in self-pity and being self-absorbed. That does not fit in with the way of bodhisattvas; I need to cultivate egolessness, refrain from thinking about myself, and refrain from caring what people think of me. I must simply help others regardless of whether or not I get recognition or respect.

Regardless of egolessness, here in India it feels good to help and be helped by people with whom I am traveling, people who are in my immediate physical environment rather than far away and never likely to meet me.


2
I left the Pragyavihar School with Feroza and John, and we wandered in the general direction of the temples. Not far beyond the school, we walked parallel to a wall on our left and greenery on the right, and when we reached the end of the wall, I saw mud in front of me, so I stepped in what I thought was ground but turned out to be a bit of swampland; it was so full of plant life that it had looked like solid ground. I quickly lifted my feet and shook them off; they were covered with muddy water. First I fell in the Bamboo Grove, and now this.

We split up with John, who was heading directly for the Mahabodhi Temple. At first Feroza said we should go back to the hotel so I could change my shoes, but after some hemming and hawing about whether we should return, I decided that I was too eager to be out and about, so Feroza and I went to the Tibetan temple and paused in front of the gate. My feet and the hem of my pants were wet with dirty water, and my feet squished. I took off my sandals and persuaded Feroza to let me stop and wipe my feet on the grass, while we stood in front of the Tibetan temple gates. High above on the white façade was red lettering:

DUIDUL JYANGCHUB CHOLING MONASTERY
Tamang Buddhist Association H. O. Darjeeling- Bodhgaya
1992

In spite of my wet, squishy feet, I blissfully smiled at the temple’s festive front façade and cheerfully took a picture of it before entering the gate. I squish-squished along, yet blissfully smiled at Tibetan monks, walked squish-squishingly over to the grass on the left of the temple grounds, took my shoes off, and wiped my feet in the grass. It was very bright and sunny out, so my feet wouldn’t have trouble drying. Water dribbled down one corner of a monastery a few feet away, so I let the water run over my muddy feet and my dirty shoes. I wiped my feet on the grass, Feroza propped my shoes against the steps leading up to the temple, and I petted and petted a cute tail-wagging black and white dog on the steps before entering.

The interior is much as I’d expect from a Tibetan temple, although smaller. It was bright and colorful, with a gold Buddha dais straight ahead, vivid murals of demons and deities on the walls, and red meditation mattresses in the center of the room. I looked up at columns wrapped in brocade banners of the traditional Buddha colors: blue, white, red, green, and yellow, made of a horizontal strip with narrow necktie-like strips of brocade hanging in rows that descended to the floor.

Feroza pressed her palms together and bowed, and I pressed my palms together and gawked, and we had a moment of silence. Then I said, “I’ve decorated my dining room based on Tibetan temple style, and I made brocade valances like those banners.”

“Lovely,” Feroza said with a smile. Unfortunately, we could only stand in the foyer rather than walk into the room, thanks to a forbidding wooden railing and a collection box in front of us. We stepped back outdoors, where I petted the dog again and collected my shoes.

We wandered in the direction of the Thai temple. I took several pictures before and after we entered the beautiful sparkly building. I noticed up close that some of the shiny stuff was mosaics of mirrors in different colors—red, blue, and yellow. We followed lots of other people into the temple, and it contained a forbidding railing like the Tibetan temple, but that didn’t stop me from admiring the décor and taking a few pictures. The wall beside the front doors was covered in a mural or wallpaper that was predominantly green and blue and was a picture of stylized ocean waves and fishes. That was less expected than the fire-topped gold Buddha on the dais and, well, lots of sparkly gold stuff. The Thai temple was about to close, and an attendant told us this mostly through sign language, so we “mustn’t tarry,” as Shantum would say. We went back out, accompanied by a small crowd who probably meant to stay longer. It was still morning, but perhaps there was supposed to be a private meditation or meeting, or a wild private party.

After we left the Thai temple, Feroza and I headed to the Mahabodhi Temple, the queen of temples. We passed by countless Tibetans and booths, or outdoor shops made of poles and cloth and maybe an aluminum roof, and we passed ubiquitous wallahs and beggars and rickshaws; this is all quite typical in India. The streets in Bodh Gaya are narrow dirt roads, with vehicles raising lots of dust. We came to tabletops with Tibetan goodies on them, and I had to stop and take a look. I noticed pendants, including dorjes, Buddhas, continuous knots, and near the jewelry stood a two-inch-tall bronze garuda. I saw turquoise and coral stones, ritual knives and bells and prayer wheels.

A turquoise prayer wheel with a handle of silver, coral, and bamboo caught my eye. For some time now I’d been thinking of getting a Tibetan prayer wheel and spun many of them during my two-week vacation in San Francisco last summer, but I didn’t want a huge one that would be awkward in my hand and probably topple over and spill a roll of prayers all over the ground. That probably would not improve my karma. The turquoise prayer wheel was fairly small, handmade, ornate, and the most attractive prayer wheel on the table, in my opinion. This was not something I could pick up in San Francisco or order out of a catalog.

The merchant was a pretty Tibetan boy, and when Feroza and I turned to him, he was deep in conversation with a Tibetan girl, and they were seated on a wooden bench next to one of the tables. Feroza said, “He’s courting,” and I giggled. She asked the merchant how much the prayer wheel was, and he said it was nine thousand rupees. Eek! Feroza haggled with him, saying that I’m young and a student, and after she had, in the process of more haggling, reminded the merchant of my youth and alleged student status once again, he said, “I can see she is young and beautiful,” and I giggled and covered my mouth, as if I were a twenty-year-old Tibetan girl. I was getting into the role. Feroza got the bid down to five thousand rupees and persuaded the merchant to add a piece of turquoise, and so he gave me a one-inch round turquoise bead. I’ll string it with coral beads. Even as I write this, I’m spinning the prayer wheel.

Somewhere on the streets of Bodh Gaya, we looked across the street and saw a booth where a Tibetan was selling herbal medicine. It was in glass jars on shelves rather than spread out loose on a cloth, as we’d seen herbal medicine, for instance, on the path of Vulture Peak. I’ve read a little about Tibetan herbal medicine; Tibetan communities still use as the primary medicine, and even the Dalai Lama’s doctor uses herbs.

Feroza and I stopped at a shawl stand and a store full of sculptures at which a “friend” as Shantum had called this sort of merchant persuaded us to stop. Mairgret had said that the bookstore next to the shoe stop and on the way to the Mahabodhi Temple sells Old Path White Clouds, and although I had initially planned to pick it up after returning to the States, I stopped at the book store and bought it with the plan to read it on my return flights. I also finally purchased Lhasa and Central Tibet, the Book of the Mysterious Price.

The bookstore is open in the front, sort of like a dollhouse. This is typical of Indian shops, which have a garage door that rolls down when the store is closed, or a set of folding accordion-like wooden doors that are folded out of the way on either side of the entrance. The bookstore had the latter. While Feroza was with the bookseller and I waited, a wallah approached us and stood just outside the front ledge of the store, and we each purchased a bag of dried bodhi leaves.

In search of the Shiva Restaurant, where we were scheduled to meet up with everyone at one thirty, we ran into John and Natalie, who helped us spot the restaurant. We were the first of our sangha to arrive at the Shiva Restaurant. It looked too small for our group, and I was certainly dubious about how we would all crowd into it. The front was open like a veranda, painted light green, and contained approximately eight tables, with four Tibetan nuns at one of them. Feroza said, “Shantum” at the front desk, and an employee indicated the inner row of tables. We reached the far corner. Shantum and others soon showed up, and it quickly became obvious that my doubts about space were unfounded. The sangha spread out over several tables, filling half the restaurant. Lunch consisted of dal, rice, spinach paneer, and my second experience with Indian ginger lemon tea, which aids the digestion.

After lunch, Feroza and I headed back to the Mahabodhi Temple. I attempted to use my new prayer wheel while walking, but the crowd was so dense that I was afraid I’d swing it and hit someone. I can see the India Times headlines: “Tibetan Nun Knocked Out By Prayer Wheel!” While we circumambulated, Feroza had to use the restroom, so she went back to the restaurant, where the line for the restroom had been quite long as we left.

I finished circumambulating and sat down next to Ann in front of the Bodhi Tree. After looking at the tree for a short time, I felt already rather blissed out. But I closed my eyes and meditated, breathing in and breathing out, and listening to the monks chanting. It was as though I was breathing with the chant, and I felt so peaceful and calm. The weather was practicing the Middle Way, for it was neither too hot nor too cold but just right, with the slightest hint of a breeze, and the sky was bright blue. I opened my eyes and noticed Feroza beside me but closed my eyes again and continued meditating for some time. When I opened my eyes, I gazed up at the tree with its glistening heart-shaped leaves dangling overhead.

Christopher Titmus’s Dharma Talk was scheduled to begin at four that afternoon, and Shantum had warned us that it would get crowded, so we should arrive at the Thai temple early, such as around a quarter till four. It was hard to tear ourselves away, but Feroza and I headed out. As we walked along the path from the Mahabodhi Temple, we began passing a chanting Tibetan monk who had a traditional Tibetan book open in front of him. He reached up and gave each of us a bright red string. Feroza started tying mine around my right wrist, and I asked, “What is this for?”
“It represents the Three Jewels,” she said, referring to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
“Cool!” I said. As she started tying the string around my wrist, she fumbled a bit, and the monk took it and tied it on me without interrupting his chanting. He then did the same for Feroza. I wonder how Tibetans came up with their style of chanting. Perhaps they wanted to imitate the sound of a herd of yaks that hadn’t been milked in a week.

We walked through the crowd while “friends” tagged along with us and wanted to know when we’d stop by at their shops. One of them was a little guy with big pretty eyes who had seen us buy adhesive bindi jewels from one of the few female merchants, who had a little table at the side of the road; this guy had a shop that sold jewelry, such as bangles, and he really wanted us to stop there. I didn’t seriously think we’d have time, and a jewelry shop was extremely low on my list of priorities, but I was trying to be nice. When we got to the end of the street, Feroza raised her hands dismissively, turned to the guy on her left and said, “Bye-Bye!” and then to the guys on her right and again said, “Bye-bye!” and then to the “friends” who had latched onto me. They turned and abruptly walked away in silence, and suddenly we were walking by ourselves. Wow.

We went to the Thai temple to attend the Dharma talk, but when we arrived confused about where the talk was to take place. We approached a side gate prominently displaying a sign saying “No Admittance,” and behind the gate stood a monk who gave us a Big Happy Smile…but didn’t understand a word of English. For me, his smile was nonetheless contagious.

We walked around to the other side of the temple and spotted a long building beyond it. Some Thais were unloading boxes from a truck at that building, and Feroza inquired about the location of the dharma talk. It turned out to be in the same long building but at the far right end, and we slipped through the doorway and into a room packed with people sitting on the floor. I sat inches inside the doorway with my knees drawn up toward my chin.

The dharma talk was about renunciation, about how not getting our own way is a part of our practice, and we shouldn’t be attached to such things as, for instance, a specific meditation cushion. Other than packing old clothing that I’m willing to leave behind, I am not sure I have been terribly focused on renunciation on this journey. I certainly have been shopping as if I’m a regular tourist rather than a pilgrim.

During the remainder of the pilgrimage, I found myself looking at the rack over our heads in the tour bus, and I made a point of saying, “I left a cushion up there,” and making it quite clear that I’m not picky about which cushion I get. As it happened, I must have switched cushions at least four times, since most of them are dark brown and more or less firm, and I genuinely didn’t feel possessive about a cushion. The same goes for the straw mats Shantum gave us: they are all either trimmed with purple or green but otherwise look the same, and I’m sure I’ve switched mats at least once.

So often in the States I use shopping as a sort of medicine for depression, and I drive off to the town of Lawrence and not only wander through art galleries but also go into stores and shamelessly shop, spending money on books or pretty things or tasty groceries that I didn’t even know existed before I set foot in the shop, instead of donating that money to worthy causes and membership renewals. Plenty of times I’ve purchased a music CD and a few years later found it in a drawer and realized that although I had wanted it badly when it was new, I hadn’t listened to it in a very long time and I should take it to the used CD shop and sell it. If I were truly practicing renunciation, I would tell myself in the store that I won’t always want this object so badly, and I would choose to let it go, to not purchase it. This has the added advantage of being able to pay my gas and electric bills promptly; of course, renunciation suggests also turning the thermostat down in winter, bundling up around the house, and reducing my use of natural gas, in which case my bills would cost less.

After the dharma talk, Feroza and I headed back up the path leading to the Thai temple and talked about what we’d do next. She spoke of taking a rickshaw back to the hotel, but I persuaded her that we should walk, for the sake of getting exercise, something I particularly need. I noticed several stray dogs playing on the close-cut lawn and cooed about them, but Feroza said you have to watch out when they’re in packs. “Oh, even when they look cute and playful?” I said like a little kid, and she replied in the affirmative. So I didn’t plunge into the yard and march up to the frolicking group of dogs as I had the first monkey I saw. Instead I walked up the path and took a few more pictures of the Thai temple’s sparkly and ornate façade.

In Bodh Gaya, the streets don’t have names. I should send Bono an e-mail. The dirt roads are narrow and dusty, and Bodh Gaya is obviously a village rather than a city, and I like it that way. Rickshaws, motorcycles, and any other traffic bring up dust when you walk down the street. I saw people walk past us wearing surgical masks, and Feroza pulled her marigold-yellow shawl over her nose. I did the same thing with one hand, but I wasn’t wearing my bright red and orange shawl like a cowboy’s mask but rather as an elegant drapery over one shoulder.

As we walked past little stands up the street leading to the Daijokyo Buddhist House, I, as happens so often, reached a corner and misjudged in which direction a three-wheeled rickshaw was going. A Tibetan monk was driving, and in the back sat a monk and one other Tibetan. I thought they were probably going straight, so I stepped toward the side street, but then they turned sharply around the corner and I quickly stepped back to where I had been—just in time to not get hit! The Tibetans and I laughed heartily, and I continued giggling as I caught up with Feroza.

I wanted to get a good look at the huge eighty-foot-tall Japanese Buddha that’s by Daijokyo Buddhist House, because I’ve continually seen it from a distance beyond some small trees, and it looks quite surreal looming in the background. We headed for it, passed through a gate, and traversed along an extensive path with the giant Buddha centered in front of it. We walked as far as we could without taking our shoes off, and I took a few pictures. On each side, a row of standing disciples, sculpted on a much smaller scale but also in elegantly draped robes, flank the Buddha. All of the figures are made of a grayish white stone. We turned back, walked down the path, and returned to the gate. “I don’t remember which way we turn,” Feroza said. Neither of us could remember, even though the giant Buddha is visible from Daijokyo, but we were fatigued and very ready to go to our rooms.

“Let’s try this way,” I said, and we walked to the right. We soon reached the corner, and we turned right…and stood in a completely unfamiliar street. Oops. To the right stretched a long and low white building, and on the left stood a tall chain link fence on which hung a wooden sign painted with the words “Cambodian Buddhist Monastery” in at least two languages. On the other side of the fence, I saw young and muscular monks playing soccer and wearing nothing but orange or red shorts. It took some time for my brain to register the situation, and I thought: Are they monks? Surely not. Yes, they are monks. Scantily clad monks. We are so not supposed to be here. I said, “Ah, let’s go the other way,” and turned around. I’m not sure Feroza saw what I saw; she didn’t say, “Darling, look! Monks in trunks!”

The Austerities Cave

At breakfast this morning, servers placed bowls of hot rice pudding in front of us. The pudding, called kheer, contains milk, pistachios, and raisins. Shantum, at the head of the table, explained that kheer is what Sujata gave the Buddha when he was starving himself nearly to death. After one spoonful, I thought it was no wonder the Buddha stopped starving himself.





Tibetan butter lamps at the temple of the Austerities Cave

While we walked from the temple back to Daijokyo Buddhist House next door, the friendly blonde dog I had met a few times previously greeted us. I stopped to pet her, and she was so delighted that she ecstatically wagged not only her tail but also her whole posterior. I petted her and petted her and petted her and started to walk away, but she playfully pulled on my raincoat sleeve with her teeth, so I laughed and petted her and petted her and petted her more. Yvette, walking up behind us, said, “Looks like she’s made a friend!” There’s nothing like devotion from a cat or dog, and this one followed me to the hotel door. In India, I think cows are more likely to be allowed in the house than are dogs.

I’ve always had a fondness for animals and have been more comfortable with cats and dogs than with humans. I think the Buddha must have loved animals. Otherwise, I don’t think he would have had so much compassion for all beings, not only people. He wouldn’t have comprehended interconnectedness, and he wouldn’t have told stories of his previous lives as various animals, in the Jataka Tales.

The bus dropped us off by the dry, sandy Nairanjana River bed. I climbed off the bus and was walking in the middle of the street, to get around the bus, when a passing vehicle nearly ran over me, but Jagdish pulled me out of the way in time. I giggled or at least smiled about nearly getting run over, but I’d been giggling and smiling a great deal ever since I got off the plane in New Delhi. “You owe him your life,” Liz informed me. I wonder how many more times I’m going to get nearly hit.

We mindfully walked across the riverbed, with Shantum in the lead, carrying an umbrella as a parasol. I fortunately wore potent waterproof sunscreen and groovy circular shades. This was a silent meditative walk, and I kept track of raising my left foot and putting it down, then raising my right foot and putting it down. Occasionally we had to step around a narrow stream of water, but the riverbed was mostly dry, pale sand. Two curious little boys joined us when we were halfway across the riverbed, and they walked with us to the other side. It was like trekking across a desert: the sun was hot, and my sneaker-clad feet squished around in the sand. The grainy texture of sand entered my mouth, tempting me to spit; but I suspected I would only get more sand in my mouth, no matter what I did.

When we got to the other side of the river, children giggled at us. I was close to Val, and she explained to me, “They think we’re dressed like men,” so I laughed also, and more sand entered my mouth. We climbed the grassy bank, which separated the river from the fields and was somewhat shady with tall trees. Children ran up to us, giggling, and while I stood with Val and a few others under a tree, the children posed for photos with members of our sangha. There was much giggling and playing and goofing off. That is, until a skinny old man with a whip walked toward us on a ridge dividing fields. He yelled at the children and cracked his whip while trudging toward them, and they quickly stopped giggling and dispersed. I watched open mouthed. The children picked up large baskets and carried them on their heads, away from us, along the ridge of land between the nearest two fields. They had acted like children for five minutes.

Val and I had just discussed how the beggar children seemed to find women more approachable, and I had said, “It’s because they think we’re motherly,” even though I have no “maternal instincts” and can only be said to be nurturing toward cute furry animals and, well, the world in general. After watching the incident with the man carrying the whip, I said to Val, “It’s no wonder they prefer women!”
Feroza later said, “A lot of the children are older than they look; they may look like they’re five when they’re really nine.”
Valerie said, “They’re old souls. Born again, and again, and again.”

We walked along the ridge of earth separating fields, as we had the afternoon and evening before. In one field of dirt, a skinny turbaned farmer was using a plow with two white buffalo, and we watched him at work for several minutes. Shantum explained that when the Buddha was nine years old and sat under a tree to meditate at the edge of a field, and farmers were plowing the field, they used the same technology as this guy; it was done the same way twenty-five thousand years ago. We seemed to be in a time warp. I could see the little Siddhartha, with my mind’s eye, seated cross-legged under a tree and watching this farmer at work.

Halfway through our walk we stopped in the shade of a banyan tree between two fields, sat on straw mats, and had a sociological discussion over digestible biscuits and lentil snacks called moong dal.

Someone asked Shantum how homosexuality is handled in India, because she had seen a couple of transvestites in New Delhi, and Shantum explained in some detail. “The British made homosexuality illegal in the 1860s, and now there’s a movement to make it legal,” he said. “People aren’t actually put in jail, but it can be used against them, so they have to be very careful. If someone who’s married wants a relationship outside the marriage, they have to leave the country. It goes on in India, but it’s a forbidden topic.” That is reminiscent of the Deepa Mehta film Fire, which someone brought up in the discussion. Shantum said, “Anything you can imagine is going on in India,” referring not only to homosexuality but such things as prostitution, including male prostitutes and child prostitutes. “It happens, but it’s not a socially acceptable thing to talk about.”

Shantum said that his brother Vikram is bi, and he’s out of the closet as a writer, but he lives in England. “He has the status of a famous writer, so he’s more accepted than others; people in India respect famous writers, so he’s popular, and many Indians are illiterate and therefore wouldn’t have read any of his books even if they have heard of him.” Shantum mentioned that Vikram will be in India on the twenty-seventh, and I refrained from blurting out, “Can we meet him?”

Also, Jennifer commented on how women can walk around in India without getting harassed. She said she walks down a sidewalk in New York and hears comments like, “Hey, baby!” all the time. Oh, I know that experience; it isn’t just in New York. That is the reason I don’t like walking on city sidewalks, even if parks are considered more dangerous. Street harassment was a big issue with my living in St. Louis, although on Sundays I typically walked, weather permitting, to and from the bookstore where I worked. In Topeka, I can't step outside and be seen by teenage boys without their harassing me, unless they're accompanied by adults or females.

Shantum explained, “There’s a different attitude toward sexuality here than in the west, and everyone is considered brother and sister.” That explains why we’re addressed that way, which I find charming: it’s like the Indians who address Western visitors as “sister” acknowledge interconnectedness, how we’re all part of the human family and part of this planet. “Even a married couple is brother and sister,” Shantum said.

Shantum said, “I think it’s harder for women in the West,” because of all the pressure to look a certain way. In a pharmacy in France, he saw a poster showing a modern anorexic woman and next to her one of Ruben’s figures (who are at least my size, as is the case in artwork by other Italian Renaissance painters). Shantum said, “Here it’s a great complement to say, ‘She has a beautiful walk. She walks like an elephant.’”
“Don’t say that in the States!” Ann said.

Shantum went on to say, “In the West you’re bombarded with sex, with imagery that objectifies women, particularly in advertising—even an ad for toothpaste.” The discussion rather reminded me of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth. I remember that in Europe even billboards show people in their underwear, which I found rather shocking as a teenage tourist in the nineteen-eighties. Even in the States I’m glad I don’t watch TV and that the magazines I read are very different from, say, fashion magazines. To some extent, when living in the West you can block out the imagery that Shantum referred to, but not entirely. Rejecting mainstream media, furthermore, does not protect me when people see me and ridicule me because they agree with pop culture’s misogynist beauty standards. It is easy enough for me to have no interest in being a blonde and blue-eyed anorexic beanpole, but many misogynists look down on me because that is how they think females should look.

Around New Year’s, I was rather too worried about how I might be perceived in India. Given the contempt and ridicule toward fat women, but not fat men, that I’ve noticed in so many Bollywood movies, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about Indians finding me attractive and flirting with me; whereas I anticipated misogynist males insulting me to my face. When I come to such scenes in a Bollywood or for that matter Hollywood film, I tend to say to the TV, “Beauty comes in all sizes, so bite me!” This ridicule is supposed to be part of the comedy. Of course, such contempt and ridicule toward women, as if our appearance is our only significant trait, is the norm in the United States, along with the whistles, comments, and catcalls that, like so many women, I’ve experienced, thanks to stupid men who have very odd notions about how to attract women.

Before embarking on this pilgrimage, I should have asked myself why I was worried about body image more in India than in America. I think it is because plenty of people in the United States make me look slender, whereas before the pilgrimage I imagined correctly that India has many poverty-stricken people who are emaciated. Also, I’ve been more or less a recluse since moving to Kansas, so I’m not normally as visible as I am on vacation, even though in Kansas I do set foot in parking lots and on sidewalks, where I am visible to creeps. Still, in India I am definitely not a recluse, traveling all over and seeing lots of sights and people, and when you’re in a foreign country, you are automatically a diplomat and represent your country.

Ironically, my worries were mostly unfounded: since Indians are not obsessed with sex and don’t generally have the fascist beauty standards that cause eating disorders and low self-esteem and that convince women that they have to be skinny and blonde in order to be beautiful, in India I am judged less by my appearance rather than more. Again, this is related to interdependence and how people perceive us as sisters and brothers rather than “the other” or worse, as objects. Corporate America among other bad things, such as advertising, tries to fill people, especially women, with self-hate. Perhaps Bollywood and big cities in India are becoming influenced by Western attitudes, including the worst Western attitudes.

During our break in the field, Jennifer turned to Shantum and asked, “Are there feminists in India?”
Shantum said, “Yes, there are,” and I remembered the ecofeminist Vandana Shiva. She has edited at least a couple books, written excellent essays, and gotten some of her own book-length works published. And I seem to recall she’s an environmentalist and a member of a group similar to the Greenbelt Movement.

Reading Arundhati Roy, whether it’s her novel or her collections of essays, I can tell she’s a feminist too. And back in the 1950s a group of Indian women started an organization, a union for saving up money for themselves. I once read a magazine article in Ms. about village women in India who run their own local newspaper or newsletter printed in the local language, and they train women in photography for the newsletter. People in villages gather together and listen to news if they’re illiterate, and many people in such communities are.

The sangha continued walking, passing goats often, and I petted a brown kid that stood at the side of the path and watched us walk past. We came to some of “Monet’s haystacks” as I like to call them, where several men were threshing rice, although it’s also a job women do. They were delighted to have visitors and gladly demonstrated the art of threshing rice. Several sangha members, such as Yvette, Erika, Natalie, Dean, and Dornora, joined the workers. I didn’t only because of my wounded hand, from my fall in the Bamboo Grove. The threshers take a bundle and whack it against a wooden board set up like a table top, and the rice comes out and falls all over, to be raked up from the ground later.

Upon seeing the cameras coming out, an older man with a handlebar moustache reminiscent of Salvador Dali, in preparation for his photo shoot, earnestly smoothed down and twirled the ends of his moustache. Children approached and watched us, while everyone was laughing and having a good time. It would be pretty funny to be working in a field at your normal job, and a bunch of people come along and gawk at you and take pictures as if your ordinary work is the most fascinating thing. For us, it was. Another thresher posed for his picture high on a haystack, a temporary stupa of rice waiting to be threshed.

We came to a road lined with farms where as usual children joined us and we sort of resembled a parade. Thatched roofs topped the mud houses. In front of the houses were beautiful black cows with horns that curl forward, puppies and dogs, skinny chickens often with brown chicks scurrying after them, and fuzzy black pigs and piglets. Plenty of children were eager to get their pictures taken; as I raised my camera to photograph a farmyard with several cows and a thatched structure in the background, one little boy ran up and stood right in the middle of where I was pointing my camera, and he asked me to show him the picture afterwards, so I did. I tried to pet one of the beautiful black cows, and it backed away from me, much to the good-natured amusement of a guy who was tagging along like everyone else. “This is an Indian cow!” he explained. Yeah, Toto never barked at that kind of cow in Kansas.

We traversed to the end of the dirt road and came to a stone walkway, lined with seated beggars. The path lead up to a mountain and steeply winded up the mountain to a Tibetan temple built in front of the Pragbodhi Cave where the Buddha practiced austerities before saying, “This is crazy!” and meeting Sujata and coming up with the Middle Way. Slightly to our right, before the mountain, the bus was parked, and we climbed aboard to get stuff like our picnic lunch boxes and our straw mats. I also took my mirrorwork bag and put in it the lunchbox and my journal.

We headed for the mountain path and ignored the beggars squatting or standing at the side of the path, holding out hands and murmuring; though I wished I could do something to help, like magically make all their pain go away. We climbed the mountain up, up, up. More beggars pleaded with us on the extremely steep path, where I was out of breath and concentrating on my steps, for fear of falling. I reminded myself that I wouldn’t be walking on this steep path and out of breath forever, just for right now, and waited till we reached the top of the path and thus on firmer ground. We almost reached the top when we came to a booth where a merchant sold Tibetan prayer flags. My breathing settled down to normal, while we sat at picnic benches for our boxed lunch, during which I gawked in fascination at my surroundings.

Part of the Austerities Cave Temple
The picnic benches were on a plateau in front of the temple. The temple was Tibetan. The monks were Tibetan. Hundreds of prayer flags were Tibetan. Even the dog was Tibetan. At least, I thought it was Tibetan. I saw two typical shorthaired and medium-sized Indian dogs, one white and one black, but also a cute little white dog with short legs and longer hair. I pointed this out, saying, “I think even the dog is Tibetan.”
Feroza said, “Stocky and strong like Tibetans.”

While we ate, I noticed the cute little white dog watching us with perked up ears and a lolling tongue, and I smiled and said, “The dog wants table scraps.” Mukesh asked me if I have pets at home, and I told him about my three cats. I did not, however, act like a proud parent by whipping out a wallet containing a stream of cat photos. How remiss of me.

The bright red temple was sort of like a layer cake, with a big lower level, up which a set of central stairs reached the second level with a railing and a sort of porch in front of more rooms, and above that were individual rooms that each had a little staircase. On the temple’s second level, monks were taking out prayer flags with help from a group of westerners and an Indian guy who climbed up a rocky outcrop of the mountain in order to attach a very long string of prayer flags at one end. Monkeys hung out on the flat Tibetan roof. If it had really been Tibet, they would have been yetis.

After lunch, we climbed the outdoor steps to the second floor of the temple, passed rows of butter lamps containing flickering flames, slipped our shoes off, and ducked through the three or four foot tall doorway leading directly into the little Pragbodhi or Austerities Cave. We went from the bright and pleasant atmosphere outdoors to the dark and confining interior of the cave. The ceiling was too low for standing up.

“Dangsiri is the name of a Hindu goddess,” Shantum had said as we approached the cave, “and it’s also one name for the cave where the Buddha practiced austerities.” To our right a couple of Hindu priests sat cross-legged, with their back to the wall, and they had a shrine and a big wooden collection box between them. Shantum told us about them earlier and had suggested that at least one person contribute, so that the priests wouldn’t be left out, and Gail volunteered to give them a couple hundred rupees.

Opposite the entrance to the little cave was an emaciated and larger than life gold Buddha. Shantum sat close to this statue, and the sangha gathered around and sat down till the cave was packed. Shantum told us a bit about the Buddha’s life, mainly what happened when he was trying out extreme asceticism and how wasted his body became. The description was really gross, for instance how he could feel his spine if he touched his stomach. We sat on our mats and meditated, but in the confined space with all these people, I sweated, and I’m not comfortable with sweating. Since I’m cold-blooded and don’t normally start sweating easily, I’m not sure whether it was really that warm or whether I broke out in a sweat thanks to my claustrophobia.

I visualized the Buddha, or rather imagined that I was the Buddha, sitting in that very same spot, emaciated and bony and meditating, but I unfortunately couldn’t transcend my awareness of uncomfortably sweating. Shantum ringed the singing bowl at the end of our meditation and said we could continue sitting if we wanted, and everyone except six of us crawled out of the cave. I looked at the statue again, closed my eyes, and did the same visualization and mindful breathing, in hopes that I’d be more comfortable with fewer people. Sure, it wasn’t so oppressive and crowded, but I still sweated and wanted open space and air. I did not reach an intense moment of emotion as I had at other Buddha places, despite knowing that the Buddha had been there in the cave, so I soon crawled out.

Outdoors, I took a deep breath and relished the cooler air and open space. If I hadn’t been too self-conscious about people seeing me do it, I would have stretched out my arms and flapped them like wings. I took several deep breaths and was about to take a picture of a carved and brightly painted Tibetan doorway, when I noticed Elly was in the room, so I crossed the threshold. To my delight, I saw a huge gold Tibetan Buddha statue on an altar to the left. A couple of beautiful and colorful thangkas hung on the wall straight ahead, along with a photo of the Dalai Lama.

I stepped outside and joined the group, who were all seated on the terrace a few feet from the cave entrance and listening to Shantum. He sat with his back to a tall chunk of rock with designs painted on it. The temple, cave, and mountain all merge together as one; I had seen a lumpy rock wall behind the big gold Tibetan Buddha. Shantum talked a bit about the Buddha’s life, when Siddhartha was at and near this cave, and we all sat or lay on our mats and got really comfortable. Valerie looked like she was having a siesta right in the middle of all of us, with her wide-brimmed hat over her face.

“The path is about being attentive to everything you do,” Shantum said. “I find Thich Nhat Hanh inspiring. I’ve known him for twenty years, and he’s progressed in his practice, he’s grown. It’s a practice of hope. We know people who’ve done it. We see our own practice.”

“Sometimes I write down what I’m aware of, and I see my progress over time,” Christine said. “The process is so slow that it seems like there’s nothing going on, but there’s really a lot.” That certainly describes my own practice. I don’t get the impression that anyone else notices any of the changes I’m experiencing, but I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t really matter what people think of me. People, particularly relatives, make accusations based on the version of me that they’ve dreamed up and completely overlook the fact that at least I’m trying to become a better person. Furthermore, they are incapable of entering my mind and have no idea what’s going on there. I also started a journal document called “My Meditation Practice.”

Although the Buddha approached several different teachers, it seems to me like he knew what he was doing, compared to me. I didn’t get serious about meditation until a few years ago, and now I have remorse for having spent too many years working in retail and trying to make ends meet when I could have been meditating and putting a lot more effort into getting my fiction published. Siddhartha started meditating at a slightly younger age than I and had plenty more leisure time.

The discussion led to the Mindfulness Training that covers mindful consuming, and the question of not only being a vegetarian but also encouraging others to be vegetarians. Vegetarianism applied to two of the mindfulness trainings: refraining from killing and mindful consuming. Someone had observed posters around Bodh Gaya: “Make Bodh Gaya a meat free zone.” Jennifer was dubious about pressuring others to not eat meat, as the Mindfulness Trainings imply, rather than keeping quiet about it when around nonvegetarians for the sake of not getting into an argument. I said, “Anti-vegetarians harass me, and I don’t want that to happen any more than it already does.”

“Just give them a graphic description of slaughter houses,” John said. I gave him a Big Smile.

On the topic of mindful consuming in the Mindfulness Trainings or precepts, Jennifer expressed an opinion that you can “take the Mindfulness Trainings and pass up on a slice of cake, but it’s still OK to go ahead and eat the cake later if you want,” just in moderation. I think that if you’re diabetic, you’d definitely pass it up, but for the rest of us her explanation made sense. To some extent there are different degrees for following the Mindfulness Trainings. You just do your best and recite the Mindfulness Trainings every month, or at least every three months.

Shantum’s comments about the Buddha going through a phase in which he was so shy that, for instance, he hid when children approached, or was startled when a twig snapped, reminded me of myself. I have on occasion panicked if the doorbell rang, or someone knocked on the door, or the phone rang. My typical reaction to hearing someone at the door is to want to hide. If I’m taking a walk when people are around, I wish I were unseen.

I sneaked up to the very top of the austerities temple and entered a beautiful little shrine room. I felt nervous and slightly shaky, thinking that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to come up here, as if I’d been invited to someone’s house and was looking through a closet. The room was completely silent, and I couldn’t hear anything outside it, not even people talking, and this added to the surreal atmosphere.

To my right sat a traditional Tibetan carved and painted wooden bench, and propped on it was a huge framed photo of the Dalai Lama. Above the photo hung colorful thangkas, or Tibetan paintings on cloth, framed with brocade. Straight in front of me, a wall-to-wall glass cabinet was filled with antique gold Tibetan statues. They included the sixteen arhats, plus a Buddha statue of maybe two feet tall wearing a colorful brocade cape, and a Manjushri of the same size and style swinging a sword to cut through ignorance and also wearing a colorful patchwork brocade cape. I stood still in awe, gazed with my lips slightly parted. I didn’t even think to take a picture, which probably wouldn’t have turned out well in such a dark room. I was up on a mountain in the country, not in a museum. It was quite enchanting and magical.

I eventually, very slowly and quietly, turned and went back down the flight of stairs, and down another flight of stairs, till I was in front of the many rows of Tibetan butter lamps set out on a very long table. Shantum and Natalie, with help from an Indian attendant, each lit a butter lamp and stood over it to pray. The attendant lit a butter lamp and handed it to me. It was a little gold bowl-shaped lamp containing butter, a wick, and a flame. I placed it between two other lit lamps on the table and gazed at the flame for a couple minutes, observing how it flickered and danced and watching the different colors in the fire. Regardless of how the Buddha disapproved of honoring only the fire god Agni, that deity should be given credit for having a sense of aesthetics.

A Tibetan-style Buddha statue inside the Austerities Cave Temple

Uruvela and Sujata

Leaving Daijokyo Buddhist House after lunch, I was about to climb on the bus, when a wallah spoke to me and I raised my hand and shook my head but in the process saw that he held two cages full of birds: one of little dark green finches, and the other with bright green beautiful parakeets. I gasped and said, “Oh!” On the subject of birds, I also heard cooing in my bathroom this morning, so I’m thinking there’s a nest close by. When I stepped outside in the morning, I saw two hummingbirds at a bush sprouting fluffy pink flowers by the front door; one bird was iridescent medium blue. Bodh Gaya is quite the birdhouse, but I’ve also noticed that it has some really friendly dogs, including a blonde one that hangs out in front of Daijokyo.

Before we got off the bus to wander around in Bodh Gaya, Shantum explained that he has “friends” here. “Friends” are guys who latch onto you and want you to buy stuff from them and from their shops. Gail asked, “So what do they want, money?”
“Love, just love,” Shantum said with a Big Smile.
Something else Shantum explained on the bus is the meaning of the Indian head-shaking mannerism. He explained that it means, “I’m listening.” Maybe after another week, I’ll be doing it. It’s more like a head wobble than the emphatic head-shaking Westerners do that simply indicates, “No.”

After lunch, which was at the hotel/school Daijokyo Buddhist House, we rode across the river to the countryside, formerly the site of Sujata’s village, Uruvela. I should perhaps clarify that when I say “across the river,” that’s actually a riverbed of sand; it fills with water during the monsoon season and is dry this time of year. It’s the Phalgu River, or its ancient name, at the time of the Buddha, was the Nairanjana River. It’s a weird sight, a pale sandy riverbed with scarcely any water.

The bus stopped for a little homemade shrine displaying a glossy life-size Buddha in a brown robe with a yellow-clad Brahmin bowing to him and offering him a bowl of rice. Many Brahmins, according to legend, were suspicious and jealous of the Buddha, since he was a threat to their status, but happily some were exceptions. A bunch of children and even a few adults latched onto us, asking us questions and saying, “Namaste!” and “Hello!” They stuck with us as we walked a short distance from the bus to the shrine. Shantum had warned us about clingy bystanders right before we got off the bus, and he had said they’re harmless, but I’m starting to get accustomed to our sangha being a group of conspicuous foreigners.

We got out our straw mats and sat on the brick patio in front of the little shrine. Shantum sat cross-legged on a bit of low brick wall and gave us a lecture that included some background info on the village and the shrine. He told us about the village girl, Sujata, who found the emaciated Siddhartha lying on the ground because he had taken his aestheticism too far and nearly starved to death. According to legend, Sujata put rice or kheer, rice pudding, in Siddhartha’s mouth and thus revived him. Siddhartha went with Sujata to the village to recuperate, and they met up with village women. Shantum said, “Probably the Buddha became enlightened because those five men left him, and he had contact with village women and got in touch with his feminine side.”

When Shantum finished his storytelling, we got up, paid homage (and a little cash) to the shrine. We headed away from it, in the general direction of the farm we would eventually visit. We walked through what seemed more like an alley than a street, since it was a narrow dirt path surrounded by buildings, some bright blue and others white.

Meanwhile, the swarm of children came along and talked with us, and a couple of them even latched onto me, even though I’m not good with kids. I’m not sure, but it seemed like they were more inclined to latch onto women than men, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if their fathers are distant and mothers much more attentive. A couple of these kids asked me, “What’s your name?”
I said, “Susan.” They smilingly repeated my name and asked where I was from, and feeling a bit uncomfortable with the question, I said, “America.”
In response to that, they said, “U. S. A.?” and I smiled and said, “Yes,” hoping they wouldn’t hold it against me but thinking they’re probably more familiar with the United States than, say, with Canada, which seems to have the good sense to mostly stay out of international news.

One of the kids pointed out his school, a simple two-story whitewashed mud structure on a corner, and he explained what a couple other buildings were. Later, when fields rather than buildings surrounded us, he pointed to a tree and said, “Banyan tree.” This gave me a smile, and I repeated it after him as I looked at the big gnarly tree with a trunk seemingly made of twisting ropes wrapped together, and with bright green rounded leaves; it had a resemblance to the Bodhi Tree. Now I’ll never forget just what a banyan tree looks like.

We walked along narrow ridges between fields, and a kid told me what plants were growing, for instance, “Potatoes.” I cautiously watched my step because the ridges were about a foot high and I thought I might fall into the field. Yeah, samsara happens. We made quite a parade, walking single file. Tagging along behind us were two adult males with malas hanging from their arms, because they hoped for a sale; they would have looked less out of place to me on the streets of Bodh Gaya or Rajgir than out here in the country. Crops we saw included cabbage, cauliflower, fava beans, potatoes, rice in the form of haystacks, wheat, and mustard. The latter looked like a field full of tiny yellow flowers. Most of the plants were only a few inches high, but in the States they wouldn’t even be planted yet this time of year.

The Monet’s haystacks that I have frequently seen are really rice, and the stacks are a similar shape to a stupa, although they look exactly like the haystacks in Monet’s series of paintings. I wonder if someone from France may have been inspired by a trip to India, centuries ago, and brought the idea abroad. Threshers beat rice on a board—that’s called threshing--to get it out of the hay-like shaft, and they rake up the rice off the ground afterward.

The parade made its way to a small white Hindu temple with a rectangular tank in front of it. We climbed onto a slope around the edge of the tank and stood watching a ceremony in which boys pulled a life-size Sarasvati statue into the water. She was portrayed in the traditional style: white skin and black hair, seated on a swan, and playing a lute. The people grasping onto the statue and performing the ritual were all boys, about ten to twelve years old, wearing trunks, and they turned her around and moved her slowly in circles. It was quite ritualistic and accompanied by a guy calling on a megaphone the entire time.

The statue was very elaborate and colorful but made of wax or some other impermanent material that dissolves in the water and leaves nothing but a really big straw dolly when it’s over. But before I saw Sarasvati in this state, the statue half-floated in the water and remained partially intact. I understand that destroying the statue shortly after Sarasvati’s day represents impermanence and detachment to the work of art, but I’m dubious about the ecological effect of this ceremony on the water.

When the ritual ended, we walked around the tank, hopped down from the slope, and headed for the temple. I cautiously stepped around one corner of the tank and as I approached the next corner, I wished I’d climbed down sooner, because the slope became a lot higher and rather more intimidating. However, a little boy held out his hand, and I took it and jumped down. I gave him a big smile and bow, saying, “Thanks,” and pressing my palms together before turning and walking toward the entrance to the temple, where I slipped out of my sandals. A little girl in a purple salwar-kamiz helped me get up the steps, and now she was the only one latching onto me. It looked like I’d lost the boys who had walked with us from the Buddha shrine. This girl’s name was Puja…I forget the rest; it was a long name and I’m bad with names in general.

I found the temple fascinating, since I’m into Goddess spirituality in addition to Buddhism. It was a series of little old buildings linked together by a paved patio. Covering one section of the patio were rows of grey stone yoni and linga sculptures, representing female and male divinity, or more specifically Shiva and Parvati; the linga was a curved lump in the center of the yoni, which was a circle with one end open. I took photos of the linga and yoni sculptures, which were obviously really old and the most abstract art I’ve seen in India so far, compared to all the detailed Buddhist and Hindu art. I also saw a little room with a really old and worn sculpture carved in the center back wall, and it had traces of red paint.

This was no urban art gallery or the British Museum, a place where I’ve seen wonderful ancient art from different parts of the world. It was a little white temple out in the boonies, surrounded by fields of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes. Here was centuries-old artwork in its original location and definitely not in a tourist trap. It was truly amazing, as if we had stepped back in time. Even the air seemed to know this was a special place, and I felt a great deal of peace. I giggled as Valerie and I stood before a big Shiva linga with an elaborate face carved on it, and I said, “You know, that’s a phallic symbol.”

On the walk from the temple to the farmhouse, the little girl Puja stayed with me and discussed not ancient artwork but the vegetables growing in the fields we passed. We continued walking through the ridges between fields, and Puja was behind Val, who noticed her and asked what her name was. Unlike me, she had no trouble repeating the name after Puja, and I felt foolish. Perhaps I overestimate my telepathic powers, but it seemed to me Puja looked up at me as if to say, “She had no trouble with my name. I think she’s smarter than you,” and I certainly felt ignorant, a sense that I frequently have around people but not animals. I have a poor head for even the simplest of Western names and have once in a while even blanked out on the name of someone I knew really well. On the bright side, I’ll never forget Puja’s big-eyed face, or her messy hair that was brown from either dirt or malnutrition, or her bright purple cotton kamiz. Sometimes I think I could communicate better if people could speak in pictures.

We reached a chain link fence around the remains of an ancient stupa, a huge crumbly pile of stone many feet tall. Thanks to the fence, we couldn’t get up really close to the stupa. It doesn’t really have a recognizable stupa shape, although it still obviously forms a circle. But it looks like it must have been huge, given how big around it still is and taking into consideration the tall bell shape typical of stupas. But that’s assuming it originally had what I think of as a typical stupa shape. Maybe I hadn’t made such a terrible impression on Puja after all, because she stayed with me throughout this walk. As we stopped to look at the stupa, she said, “That is Sujata House.”

I thoughtfully repeated, “Sujata House” after her while I stared out at the huge structure, tried to picture what it looked like centuries ago, and wished we could get on the other side of the chain link fence and walk up to the stupa. I wondered if it really had been a residence, or whether that was just what the local kids called it. I imagined it must have been gigantic originally, with a dome rising perhaps fifty feet into the sky, in which the sun now set beyond the stupa.

We all gathered around and stopped walking. Shantum said, “They’re saying this is Sujata Stupa or Sujata House. This is probably where Sujata offered rice to the Buddha.” I pictured, where the stupa loomed, Siddhartha lying in the dirt and the girl Sujata, looking much like these village children, shyly walking up to Siddhartha, squatting, and offering him a terra cotta bowl full of rice pudding.

Meanwhile, I pulled out my journal and pen and wrote some notes about the stupa, and Puja begged for my “book and pen.” I gave her the pen and she begged for the book, but I said, “No, it’s my book.” If I had had a blank notebook or sketchpad, I would have given it to her. She then asked for money, which we’re not supposed to give, and I remembered my experience with the fruit by the chariot tracks. I was tempted to give Puja an orange that still lurked in the bottom of my bag, but I certainly didn’t want all the other kids to come after me for fruit.
It turned out that I had another pen in my bag, as I discovered on the roof of the farmhouse, so I sort of wish I’d given it to Puja. I thought that if she followed me to the bus, then I’d give her an orange and quickly climb aboard, but by the time we left the farmhouse, it was dark out and I didn’t see her. Um, I’m undergoing a bit of guilt here.

Now as I write this, despite that sense of guilt, I’m almost tempted to laugh at myself, because I remember the film Schindler’s List, at the end of which Oskar Schindler experienced similar guilt and pointed out things that he could have given away to help more Jews escape. I was a college student taking a class called Holocaust Literature when that film opened, and one of the books we read for class was Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally. I brought the book with me to a writing workshop and sat next to the instructor, Joe Schuster, who asked me if I’d seen the film. I started to speak, laughed, and said, “I was just about to call it Schuster’s List.”
Joe picked up his pen and said, “I could have given away this pen!” He then picked up a notebook and said, “I could have given away this notebook!” Really, you give what you think of giving at the time, and it’s no use wallowing in guilt afterward, because that’s a form of worrying about something that is over, something that it’s too late to change. Shantum would point out that worrying is pointless.

Sujata Stupa wasn’t far from our next stop, the farmhouse. The ultimate reason we had taken this outing was to visit a local family at their farmhouse. Shantum explained that he met the dad when he, Ragish, was only fourteen years old, and since then Shantum’s been taking pilgrimage groups to visit Ragish. The house was a simple brick building without electricity, and we walked as a parade past a doorway through which I could see a cow.

We stepped single file up a narrow wooden staircase, to the flat roof of the house, where we got comfy on blankets spread out like rugs, and a couple people sat on a sort of couch that was a wooden rectangular structure with a hammock-like rope seat. We drank masala chai out of our metal tumblers that Shantum gave us on the first day of the pilgrimage, and we hung out with the family, which Shantum sponsors. He interviewed the family in Hindi and translated for us, and he also added some of his own comments. I wrote down some notes before it got too dark.
Community things include chipping in to build a well, a bathhouse for the women, etc. Ragish started out in a mud house but has built this brick house since then (probably thanks to Shantum’s support). The couple has two daughters and one son; another son had died. The living boy got into the nearby school, but they only allow so many kids and wouldn’t let the older girl go to the school, so Ragish is trying to get her into a different school.

The barber, or hair cutter, wanders to different villages and has a big hand in helping the community. Some places, such as Rajasthan, still have child marriage. The vast majority of Indians still have arranged marriage, Shantum explained, and only a tiny percentage, really liberal people, don’t do it. Seventy percent of Indians are the poorest people.

Sharecropping is common, but Ragish owns a plot of land. He’s both a farmer and a laborer, and his wife sells vegetables. She buys them in the village and crosses the river to sell them at a higher price, just like the people we previously saw with baskets of colorful veggies at the side of roads, in New Delhi and other places. In the process of interviewing him, one of our sangha asked what Ragish’s hope in life is, and Shantum translated and gave us Ragish’s answer: to help his children be independent and to read and write and get on in the world. “If the child studies and is healthy, all’s well,” Shantum translated. Ragish feels the same way about his daughters, not just the son, and wants the older girl to go to school “so she won’t have the stigma of illiteracy.” The parents are each twenty-eight years old, the oldest daughter is twelve, and the boy is ten.

The family, including two of the kids, spoke in Hindi to Shantum and he translated for us. We had a question and answer session. Ragish asked, “What do you do for a living?” and several of the group answered. That’s how I found out that Peter’s a retired scientist and specialized in studying oil and gas.

Gail mentioned to Shantum that a lot of the kids are named Kumar, and Shantum said, “The name Kumar means Prince, and it is a common name here. Some people change their surname to Kumar to hide their caste. It’s a sort of leftist movement.”

“Mulchis are shoemakers and live outside the village. Muslims are casteless. So are tourists,” Shantum said. “That’s a new caste,” he added with a Big Smile.

After we rode the bus from the farmhouse back to Bodh Gaya, the bus driver stopped on a busy road and most of the sangha climbed off to go shopping and do errands, but I desperately needed quiet time to myself. Thus I was one of only six people who remained on the bus to go back to Daijokyo Buddhist House at about six thirty. Noticing how few were returning to the hotel, I thought of myself as an old fuddy-duddy, but I nonetheless was glad to take it easy in my room alone after so much socializing.

I tend to bounce off the walls if I’m by myself or just with cats, but if people surround me, they can be like vampires who suck away my energy instead of blood. That was how I was feeling at that point in the day, even though the people in question were not verbally abusive relatives or other negative people. I am inherently introverted, and in this situation, even the positive energy I was getting from the group of Buddhists didn’t prevent me from needing some relaxing solitude.

It was pitch dark out when the bus dropped us off by the Daijokyo Buddhist House, and the six remaining sangha members wandered down the narrow dirt road. We were confused about where we were, since it was so dark and we weren’t directly in front of our temporary residence. Therefore Viru, the driver’s assistant, led us to the front gate. Meanwhile, a bike swerved within inches of us, and someone said, “Watch out, kids.” As a second kid on a bike swerved around us, I noticed he wore Tibetan robes.
I laughingly said to Feroza, “You know you have bad karma when a Buddhist monk runs over you with a bike.”

After dinner, I went with most of our sangha into the lobby, where we sat at the little coffee tables and where Shantum asked for masala chai and introduced us to a young British-looking blonde Canadian named David. I had my ubiquitous notebook handy and took notes between sips of sweet, milky chai during our talk with the guest. He told us about the attention the village is getting from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Not only is the village experiencing charitable support, but there is also concern over historic preservation of such structures as the Mahabodhi Temple, and there is the issue of developing the area. Locals are Hindus who aren’t interested in Buddhism, there is a fairly new bridge, and there’s even threat of a golf course in Bodh Gaya. New schools are opening, which is a good thing, but quality can be questionable.

At every hotel where we’ve stayed, the electricity runs on generators, and the lights go out periodically. It doesn’t take long to get accustomed to this. I’ve also noticed some hotel rooms have a special light switch that the cleaning staff apparently turns off during the day, no doubt to conserve energy. In response to a comment that he’s able to laugh at a frustrating and depressing situation, David said, “You have to be light with it.” The lights went out.

Under the Bodhi Tree

Heading for the Mahabodhi Temple, the sangha moved through the lively crowded streets full of beggars and merchants, Indian and Tibetan. We walked toward a colorful wooden archway topped with a gold Wheel of the Law flanked by two gold deer. The wheel and deer were flat and the entire archway was probably made of plywood, since it was a temporary display. Across the archway, on a blue background, were the words:


HEARTILY WELCOME TO 18TH NYINGMA MONLAM FOR WORLD PEACE (19-28 JAN. 07) SIKKIM NYINGMA MONASTERIES AND CO-ORDINATED BY ECCLESIASTICAL DEPT. GOVERNMENT OF SIKKIM.

Above this bold white lettering in English was the message in Tibetan. Looking around at the many red-robed figures, I said to Val, “Tibetan monks are so pretty, I think because of the colors they wear.” “It’s also because they look so different from us,” Val said. We came to a long, pale stone staircase descending down, down, down. From the top of the staircase I enjoyed a frontal view of the Mahabodhi Temple, a very tall stone structure shaped like a really steep pyramid and covered with elaborate carvings of Buddhas and lotuses. The staircase descended to a path leading to the front door of the temple, and on either side of the path stood little stupas in different colors and styles, some red, some pink, and some grey. We reached the bottom of the staircase, and on the left hung a big brass bell with a rope dangling from inside.

A little boy in red monk’s robes walked up to it, reached up, grabbed the rope and yanked it, but the bell was silent. It could have been like that for centuries, for all I knew. John, who was walking beside me, said quietly, “I love naughty boys.”

The Mahabodhi Temple

 Tibetan butter sculptures next to the Mahabodhi Temple

We went around to the left side of the Mahabodhi Temple and walked toward the back. Next to the tall temple, and dwarfed by it, stands the tree itself. Approaching the Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha achieved Enlightenment on a full moon night, I saw that a stone fence encompassed the tree and also contained a flashy little gold Thai shrine. Marble tile covered the earth around the little carved stone fence that was decorated with floral and humanoid designs. A larger and similar stone fence circumscribed the marble tile in a much larger square; we were inside that square. I was a bit on the disappointed side. I had visualized the Bodhi Tree as a huge gnarly tree amid bright green grass and other trees out in the wild. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would look different today than it did twenty-five thousand years ago.

I circumambulated both the tree and the temple, while I admired the elaborate detail and architecture of the tall Mahabodhi Temple. I walked mindfully but also kept looking at the façade and admiring the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas carved into the pale beige stone walls and in some instances painted or gilded. During the second circumambulation, I went inside the somewhat crowded temple, looked at the large gold Buddha statue inside a glass display case, and went back out to continue circling. I felt very calm and peaceful, even though the setting was completely different from what I had always imagined. I completed the third circumambulation and joined our sangha in a corner of the larger carved stone fence, where we faced the Bodhi Tree. It was only a few feet in front of us. We used our handmade straw mats that Shantum gave us at his house, rather fortunately since the floor was hard marble rather than soft earth.

Shantum rang the singing bowl, and we meditated. I visualized the tree in the Buddha’s time, and how I had expected it to look. My vision of the Bodhi Tree no doubt would have been more accurate when the Buddha sat beneath it. I pictured Siddhartha Gautama sitting cross-legged in front of the tree, facing me and wearing ragged yellow robes. The same intense emotion I had had in the cave on Vulture Peak came over me; I was shaking and tears almost came, but this emotion ended in a matter of seconds. I opened my eyes and looked at the tree, closed my eyes again, and wanted to return to that emotion. It had ended in a flash and never returned.

I’ve read in books about meditation that you shouldn’t try grasping onto or repeating an experience you had on one occasion, no matter how blissful it was. That would not be in keeping with cultivating detachment, because you’d be attached to that experience. Some people think they gained enlightenment while in India, but after they return to their humdrum American life, they eventually return to their customary anger, depression, and dissatisfaction. They thought that since they had a particular experience while meditating, an experience that seemed like a major breakthrough, they would be able to return to that experience again and again. But like everything else, the experience was impermanent.

After ringing the bowl three times, Shantum gave us a lecture about the life of the Buddha, and I took notes despite the distraction of seeing so many Tibetans and other Asian pilgrims. Shantum told us about Ashoka’s relation to the Bodhi Tree, such as how he spent so much time under the tree that the empress became jealous of it and had it poisoned. The tree we see now is the forth in this location, but the successors were all saplings from the original, so it is a direct descendant. Ashoka also sent a sapling from the Bodhi tree to Sri Lanka, where his daughter planted it. Meanwhile, he had the Mahabodhi Temple built, and it is in such great condition now largely because it was buried in dirt for centuries.

“Buddhists from many different countries come and make offerings and build stupas. It’s like a stupa factory,” Shantum said. Indeed, lots of stone stupas, in numerous styles and sizes, surround the Mahabodhi Temple.

“The Mahabodhi Temple,” Shantum said, “inside is mostly solid, but there’s a meditation hall with a beautiful statue way up high. We, however, are not allowed to go in there; the general public is only allowed on the bottom floor.”

At the end of Shantum’s history lesson, he asked me to begin reading to the sangha and passed me his big thick book, Old Path White Clouds, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I took it and started reading, but before I finished the first sentence, several people called out that they couldn’t hear me. Referring to the reading at our meditation sitting, Shantum said, “Who read this morning?” Jennifer had; she has a strong voice with a nasal New York accent and is good at projecting.
I was seated on my straw mat on the marble tile, and John was sitting on the marble ledge behind me and said, “I could hear you.”
I smiled and said, “That’s because you’re right behind me!”
He said, “Tough crowd.” I handed the book to Jennifer, and she got up and sat next to Shantum, who was facing us with his back to the tree. She began to read a chapter, and although I was more inclined to gawk than to listen mindfully, I was aware that the chapter was appropriately about the Buddha’s experience under the tree.

Gail, the schoolteacher, took over and read at least two chapters. Sometimes I listened; the book is a novel by Thich Nhat Hanh and based on the life of the Buddha, and I look forward to getting my own copy of it. Dornora had told me she has read it five times, and I said I’m definitely getting my own copy as soon as I get back to the States.

But while I was supposed to be listening under the Bodhi Tree, I often barely heard the words while I gazed at the tree, gawked at Tibetans and others passing by, and took many pictures of Tibetans. Some of them, especially monks, stopped to stare at us in awe or puzzlement. Just as Val had mentioned a few days ago about Indians, “We are just as exotic to them as they are to us.” So Tibetans stood about two feet away from me, not only children but also adults, and they didn’t object to my picture taking, though they mostly didn’t smile either. My attitude was: since you’re standing right there, I’m taking your picture!

A few of the monks somewhat resembled the Dalai Lama. One of them wore a surgical mask like many people around here; it’s a protection against germs and dust, and at least one wallah sells them. I made up a story that the Dalai Lama was in disguise: he slipped on a mask so he could visit Bodh Gaya without a mob, without armed guards, without recognition. I decided I wouldn’t give away his secret.

The thousands of Tibetan monks had been gathering and sitting cross-legged outside the outer stone fence, and amid the “stupa factory,” while we listened to Jennifer and then Gail reading. At least one of the monks chanted into a microphone, and the sound drowned out Gail’s reading, so she stopped and our sangha dispersed to later meet by the shoe stop, where everyone takes off their shoes. I got up, folded and tucked away my straw mat, stood close to the stone fence, and gazed at the sea of Tibetans seated cross-legged and clad in vivid maroon, red, pink, and yellow. If Tibetan monks and nuns had any idea how pretty they are, they’d trade in their red and yellow robes with drab grey ones.

I had time to circumambulate again, but first I stepped over to the tree and looked at it up close and observed the offerings of marigolds and of tall pink lotuses lying in front of the metal gate. Above, the heart-shaped leaves dangled from the branches and twirled around, catching sunlight, as if the tree were, instead of a part of nature, a gigantic mobile with leaves made of tinsel and green paper. Oscar Wilde had said, “Life imitates art,” and this sometimes seems true, although most of his witticisms were just for the sake of amusement. Looking at the tree, I no longer felt disappointed. I pressed my palms together and mentally recited a few lines I had memorized from Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. I left my wilting marigold lei and a fresh marigold from Rikki in front of the Bodhi Tree.

I then circumambulated three times, listening to thousands of Tibetan monks chanting in surreal deep voices. I felt blissed out, hypnotized, and enchanted. A little smile settled on my lips and didn’t want to leave. This chanting was without drums, cymbals, horns or bells, but it was still a delight. While listening and watching and circumambulating three times, I was in a happy place.